Valentines gift for City of Harare

Lovemore Lubinda

‘It is said love is in the air,’ as the nation commemorate the 14 February Day, the Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA) has prepared a wonderful gift for the city with calls for them to pay back by showing love through service delivery.

Posted on its Facebook account, CHRA has a beautiful red heart made of roses for the local authority inscribed; “This Valentines Day Resident Demand Love through provision of clean water, refuse collection and road maintenance. You deliver, we pay.”

The association says it subscribes to the school of thought that residents are rates compliant, and could happily execute their mandate of paying, if the city reciprocates the gesture with love shown through service delivery.

This artistic impression by CHRA is one way of engaging the authorities tackling serious issues but presented on a lighter note, as it has generated interest on the platform with both residents and councillors commenting on how best to find one another for a common good.

Sadly, and most disheartening, while this has been going on a serious matter has just eclipsed it, the death of four family members.

CHRA says it has been drawn into sorrow as it joins the city’s inhabitants and the nation at large at the loss of four family members in Budiriro who succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning from a pump they were using while emptying a well.

The incident left Harare residents shell shocked, and CHRA says the local authority is all to blame for the tragedy.

“As CHRA, we however would like to highlight that the Budiriro incident is one of the many cases of needless loss of life arising out of the failure by the Harare City Council to offer effective service delivery, such as clean, safe, and potable water,” says CHRA.

Meanwhile, whilst shallow wells have been reported for contributing to the spreading of waterborne diseases as residents drink contaminated water, they have become death traps too.

The lives of children are at risk from accidental falling. In March 2014, a child fell into a shallow well in Mabvuku and died. The well was dug to provide water as the city failed to provide tap water and was left uncovered resulting in the child accidentally falling into it and died.